Richard Moore's Straight Talk Columns

Fane's drunken blunder riles his audience

29/6/2010

``OOOH, I'm in the poo, ow!''

You can guarantee that's what David Fane - comedian and voice behind Jeff da Maori from bro'Town fame - is thinking at the moment.

And so he should.

Fane was apparently drunk at a recent Radio Roast and unleashed an anti-semitic tirade that went way beyond the realms of humour.

His effort - described as an expletive-laden rant - had him saying ``Jews were expendable'', ``Hitler had a right'' and HIV sufferers deserved to be ``roasted''.

Boy, oh boy, oh boy.

I'm very close to an elderly Jewish woman who lost 80 per cent of her family in German concentration camps during World War II.

And I know a Hungarian Jew who, as a child, was in the Budapest ghetto waiting to be sent to a death camp and somehow, with his aunt, escaped that fate. No other family members made it.

Fane needs to remember that more than six million people, who were Jews, were brutally treated and murdered by Adolf Hitler's mob and the German nation.

That's 1.5 times the entire population of New Zealand.

Sort of puts any local grievances into a bit of perspective doesn't it?

Fane has apologised and clearly feels pretty badly about the episode, but maybe six million is too big a number for him to contemplate.

What he needs to do is take himself off to the Anne Frank exhibition and get a personal touch on the Holocaust.

The exhibition is a very moving show, featuring photos of Anne Frank's young life and how Germans treated the Jews.

For those of you who don't know, Anne Frank and her family hid for years in an attic in Amsterdam as the Germans tried to exterminate all of Europe's Jews. Eventually they were discovered and sent to concentration camps. At 15, Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Every one of her family, with the exception of her father, died.

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Now, the Froggies can't play soccer but they do have some terrific ways to deal with crime. Unfortunately, one of those has gone now, but the guillotine was a ripper.

Fancy being found guilty of a capital crime, finding yourself lying on a board under a big and very sharp blade.

All of a sudden it's whooosh ... and you find yourself staring back up at your headless neck from the bottom of a wicker basket.

Even better, is the cunning plan to incarcerate crims with a view to stopping them committing crimes.

It could be the world's greatest rehabilitation programme, but more likely it's pairing les felons with les cannibals.

Imagine it ... no longer do you fear the 300kg gorilla in your cell, it's the 60kg guy with the lean-and-hungry look that will have you packing death.

And being locked in a cell with Nicolas Cocaign - the man who has fessed up to killing his cellmate and then cutting out his lung and eating it - would be enough to make any fellow change his naughty ways.

Brings a new meaning to my favourite French dish, steak tartar.

Vive la difference!

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Here's a hearty ``well done guys'' to the Mount Maunganui kids who trekked up to Auckland for the secondary schools' Stage Challenge.

Their show - which I was fortunate enough to see in rehearsal - was a very fine interpretation of the Tangiwai disaster.

Weeping Waters featured excellent dancing and superb stage props and smooshed the competition at the Aotea Centre.

Fabbo effort by all and sundry.